seriously told me it was all right, and he didn't mind my skepticism at
all. I know he was laughing at me this morning, when he made me go to
church for the first time in ten years to hear that sermon which not
twenty people there understood."

"One always has to pay for one's friend's hobbies," said Mr. Dudley. "I
am glad he has had a success. If we keep a church we ought to do it in
the best style. What will you give me for my pew?"

"I never sat in a worse," growled Strong.

"I'll not change it then," said Mr. Dudley. "I'll make Esther use it to
mortify her pride."

"Better make it over to the poor of the parish," said the professor;
"you will get no thanks for it even from them."

Mr. Dudley laughed as though it were no affair of his, and in fact he
never sat in his pew, and never expected to do so; he had no taste for
church-going. A lawyer in moderate practice, with active interest in
public affairs, when the civil war broke out he took a commission as
captain in a New York regiment, and, after distinguishing himself, was
brought home, a colonel, with a bullet through his body and a saber cut
across his head. He recovered his health, or as much of it as a man can
expect to recover after such treatment, and went back to the law, but
coming by inheritance into a property large enough to make him
indifferent to his profession, and having an only child whose mother was
long since dead, he amused the rest of his life by spoiling this girl.
Esther was now twenty-five years old, and for fifteen years had been
absolute mistress of her father's house. Her Aunt Sarah, known in New